I started researching what is now known as SEO about 13 years ago. I tried over and over to build the site that I dreamed would rank at the top of Google. At the time I began the key apparently was Meta Tags. I made meta tags just like my competition, and made by key word density for the words in those tags higher. I figured that would easily put me to the top. I waited for months on sites, and I never moved at all. One thing I did find interesting is there were some reputable sites that were stuffing words in like pornography, XXX etc to try to capture free traffic on highly searched words even though their sites were not relevant to those results. Basically after nearly duplicating sites I never improved my rankings.

My next feeling was that it must have been the size of the site that had to do with the ranking. I had a problem though in that I would not be able to build large sites because there really wasn’t much content on a subject. Every number one site seemed to have a ton of indexed pages. Then I cam across Traffic Booster Pro. This is a program that takes RSS feeds, randomized them and creates a ton of highly optimized pages. Within days I saw results. I was ranked number 60 for a very competitive keyword. I was so excited, I had finally figured it out. Google crawled several times a day. I had the bigger site. This program built all those pages I needed, and redirected each user to my homepage. I got a major increase in traffic for a period of time, but one day because Google crawled so much it crashed my entire data center. Then I noticed my rankings fell completely off Google. I figured once the data center was fixed and I slowed Google’s crawl rate on my site my rankings would return. Big mistake, Google had penalized my site. My site doesn’t even rank number 1 for the made up keyword in my domain now, all because of this program.

Then on the advice of some Gurus I decided to start a link exchange. I put code on my site on how to exchange links, and on top of that I joined Linkmarket.net to exchange links. I was able to secure a bunch of links to my site and I built a reciprocal directory with probably 400 partner sites. Guru’s claimed this is how they go their rankings, but after some testing I decided to see if these Guru’s have reciprocal links on their site. Guess what? They didn’t. These guys weren’t using reciprocal links to get those rankings. Once again I saw no results, and had proof that the Guru’s pushing this also saw it as ineffective. I don’t want this to be construed that links don’t help. Look at the results for “click here” on Google. Adobe ranks #1 and click here is not anywhere on their site as a keyword. They just have a bunch of links with that anchor text. However, they are not exchanged links. I haven’t found one site being number one on Google with exchanged links.

To answer the question no you should not EXCHANGE links. There are two ways to get links to your site that impact your rankings. First of all you share information like this. This article is going to get a bunch of links to my site, and help my rankings, and all I do is share my experience. I do this several times a day with several topics that have to do with my sites. So how do I get links that help my site.

Like I said two ways of getting links without exchanging. Link bait and content sharing. Link bait is like the ad that Burger King did on the internet with their chicken website. It was a guy dressed up in a chicken suit dancing around and doing silly things. People linked to it in the masses and ranked Burger King number one for the word chicken. The problem with link bait is that you have to be extremely creative to make something people want to naturally link to. If you aren’t you can hire someone to do it for you for a pretty penny. It is possible to get these amounts of links easier.

I prefer to use content sharing like this article you are reading. I publish informative articles and distribute them to directories that webmasters go to get content for their site. If people like my information they will publish my article. For instance this article will probably get published by SEO website trying to provide current advice on improving rankings. This benefits the webmaster because if they are constantly adding new content spiders will hit their site more, therefore each change will be indexed faster. That catch is that to use my content they must provide a link back to me in my resource box. This box cannot be modified. If no webmaster likes my article, it is still published in 1000s of directories that I submit to, creating great links back to my website. I do not have an outbound link on my site. I have meta tags that are almost worthless, but my 3 page site ranks very well for keywords due to content sharing.

To conclude it won’t hurt to have a well coded big site, but that is not what pulls rankings. The best rankings I ever obtained are from submitting articles. I love to write the different articles and share information or knowledge I have for free. Also Google can tell that I am manually writing these because there is no duplicate information in them across the network. So they know that I am not trying to steal rankings, that I am providing legit information and a link to my site. This causes each link to have a nice weight with google. My job has become to promote my website through distributing information.

The key to internet marketing success is to attract website visitors and convert them into loyal and paying customers. This is accomplished with a variety of strategies and tactics which all begin and end with your website.

Powerful Customer Experiences

One of the most important aspects of owning an online store is your customer experience. To the customer that means being able to find all of the information they need to make a purchasing decision.

Customers will want to read product descriptions, have shipping calculations be quick and easy and a FAQ page is a great way to take care of all those recurring questions.

A powerful customer experience also includes feeling welcomed and valued ” a sense of connection. This can be provided and enhanced by utilizing frequent buyer programs and an about us page to show them who you are and what youre about.

Valuable and Consistent Content

Youve likely heard the term Content is King. Its overused for sure but it still holds true. Content not only provides your website visitors with the information theyre seeking, it helps drive search engine traffic to your site. However, organizing and uploading all of this content can be a full time job if you dont have a content management system to get the job done quickly.

A content management system or CMS makes creating, storing, modifying, and even removing content from your website a quick and easy process. No HTML skills are necessary to create a professional looking website. Its a great time saver.

Secure, Easy To Use Shopping Cart

While a shopping cart may seem like a mere technicality to you, its an integral part of your customers experience. Customers need to know that their information and transaction is secure. They want to know all shipping and sales tax information right up front, and they want a system which lets them manage their cart with relative ease.

For business owners a good shopping cart system will manage your data, produce real time reports and not cost an arm and a leg.

Easy Navigation

In order to make the most of your customers time, and to keep them on your website, make it easy for them to find what they want. Provide a search tool which lets them enter their keyword and find exactly what they need with relative ease. For example if you own a store selling pet clothing, rather than asking your customer to search through pages of products, provide a search tool lets your customer find dog sweaters quickly and easily.

Offering your visitors a search tool tells them you respect their time and value their business and the keyword information the tool provides gives you valuable insight.

Search Engine Traffic

When building a profitable online business SEO plays a very important role in driving website traffic and sales. A key feature for a website builder is an easy SEO system which makes linking, content, and keyword tagging including meta and alt tags a straightforward process.

If your website builder also comes with a sitemap feature each time you update your website content, the search engines are automatically notified, saving you tons of time and ensuring your website is getting noticed by the search engines and potential visitors.

Branding

In the competitive world of online business, your branding strategy can certainly help set you apart from your competition. While a logo is important, think about the Nike swish or the colorful eBay lettering, for a small business owner your personality is a large part of your brand. Your personality can be reflected in the content and design on your website.

Not all website builders are the same. In fact some are downright difficult to use much less profit from. Make sure the website builder you choose not only provides all the features you need to create a powerful customer experience but also tools and features which make owning and operating a profitable website as quick and simple as possible.

One of the things that I decided that I would try out this year was try my hand at running a website that offered stock photos royalty free.  I thought that it would be a great idea to market the photographs of others and help other photographers support their hobby.

But it wasn’t easy getting one of these sites off of the ground.  You see, there are many stock photography agencies out there, and I had to carve my place out amongst them.  I just didn’t want to be a clone of every other site out there – I wanted to offer something unique to the world.

So, that is why I have been very picky when choosing which stock photo would make the cut and which one would not be shown on my site.  I guess my reasoning behind it is that I believe that if the photograph isn’t of the utmost quality and sharpness that I wouldn’t want to use it  – so neither should my customers.

So far, the sales have been slow, but they are picking up.  I am hoping that at some point it will replace my full time income and become the vehicle that lets me retire early.  I guess that I should get back to working on my stock photography website…

I have decided that I would do some research and see if I can find the best MySpace layout online.  I have had some experience with MySpace, though I haven’t done a lot with it up to this point.  But, I am pretty good at finding things online, so I figured that this would be a good challenge for me.

What I wasn’t counting on was the large number of sites dedicated to MySpace layouts.  I mean, you could find ones related to music, movies, television, pets and I even found Christian MySpace layouts.  In fact, I was overwhelmed by the number of layouts available and now I will need to devote even more time to this project.

So, I have been going site to site to see what the most downloaded layouts are, and then I am saving them to test later.  I am also making a list of sites that do review the layouts, and I am going to tabulate the results from them as well.

It looks like this is going to be a little more work than I bargained for, so it might be a few weeks before I have an answer – but the results will be worth it.

My wife has been assembling scrapbooking kits for many years now, and has been selling them in town for a small commission.  Sure, she doesn’t make a lot, but whatever she makes is spending money for us, so the more, the merrier.

She came to me the other day and told me that she had started up an online store to sell the kits that she had created.  I guess she signed up with an offshore merchant accounts company and they provided her with free shopping cart software that had an integrated credit card processing system.

So she has spent the better part of the past week setting up her store.  She has taken pictures of pretty much everything and it is starting to look like a nice site.

I have been doing the work around the house so she can get it finished – I bet it will do very well.

One of the things that I have felt that my business was missing was a killer logo.  What I mean by that is that I need a logo that would be remembered by anyone that would visit the site.  I figured that if the logo was memorable, I would have more repeat visitors, and in turn, more business.

But creating a memorable logo was definitely not my strong point – I can’t really even draw a stick man that well.  So, I knew that I would need to find a company that did logos as their speciality, and rely on their skills and wisdom to create the masterpiece I was seeking.

I looked for logo design online, and found some good candidates for my task.  I have submitted a request to see some of their designs, and I will pick the best one out of the bunch for my logo design.

I can’t wait to see what they will come up with, and the effect on my business.  Needless to say, it is about time that I have a great logo for my site.

My husband has been running his own Internet company for several years now. It started out as just a hobby, but he soon found that he was making money online. He decided that he should do this for a living, as it was something he really enjoyed. I thought it was great that he could actually make money for something that he was just doing for fun in his spare time.

He started purchasing web advertising to help him get links to his web pages. That is when we started really noticing the difference in the amount of money that we were making. He quit his job and started to devote his full attention to the business. I thought it was amazing how quickly the business grew.

We decided that it was time for him to show me how to run it in case something should ever happen to him. I am enjoying working with him a lot and it is so much better than working for my man than it is working for the man.

I found myself on a trip this past weekend, and sadly my laptop didn’t come with me.  It isn’t the newest machine on the block, and the battery just holds a small half hour charge – not enough to get anything done on the road.  So, I left it at home, and I was left with only my mobile phone.

But I found out that it isn’t the worst thing in the world.  You see, I was sure to join a mobile social networking site before I left, and I was able to get some networking done on the little downtime that I had on the trip.

In fact, had I known how well the wap site I joined worked months ago, I would have made more of an effort to use it in the past.

Needless to say, I think that social networking on my phone will be one of my priorities in the next few months – I am surprised how effective it can be.

Having children at home during the day can be quite a challenge for any self employed parent.  This is especially true if you work out of your home – you can find yourself interrupted on a regular basis many times throughout the day.

So, I find myself sitting here night after night at the computer trying to get work done before my fatigue overcomes me.  Some nights are better than others, but on the whole, I do get more done when my kids are in bed.

It has become a lot easier now that I am using software to create the web menus I need for the sites that I design.  The quick and easy web design software that I am using simplifies my job – I can focus on making the site look the way I want it without worrying about the code.

Needless to say, I should get back to working on the site that I am doing tonight – I am feeling sleepy already.

We own a small hardware store in town and we have been thinking of setting up an e-commerce storefront to create extra opportunities for us to generate income.  Our store does very well on its’ own, but we thought that some extra income would give us the money we need to expand the shop.

Since we really didn’t know what we needed, we sent out tenders to a few local website consultation firms to see what they would suggest.  We thought by getting multiple opinions on what type of online shopping cart software we should be using, we could choose the best option for us.

The company that presented to us today showed us the best ecommerce shopping cart software that is on the market right now.  I was very impressed with the presentation and script presented to us, and we will definitely consider it for our final choice.